Ashley Judd Tells Magazine She was Treated for Depression

NEW YORK, July 5, 2006 -- Ashley Judd says she spent 47 days in a Texas treatment facility in February for depression and other emotional problems, in an interview in Glamour magazine.

"I needed help," the 38-year-old actress tells the magazine in its August issue. "I was in so much pain."

Judd, the daughter of country music star Naomi Judd, says she entered the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap for "codependence in my relationships; depression, blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings."

"But because my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn't have known to seek treatment. At Shades of Hope, my behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag."

Judd says she was visiting her sister, singer Wynonna Judd, who was being treated for food addictions.

"When (the counselors) approached me about treatment, they said, `No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you're too smart and together. But you (and Wynonna) come from the same family - so you come from the same wound.' No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound," she says.

Judd says her childhood was a time of "complete and total chaos." She attended 13 schools in 12 years and lived alternately with her mother, grandmother and father.

As a result, Judd says, she became "a hypervigilant child," striving to be perfect.

"A wonderful pastor once told me, `Perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse,"' she tells the magazine. "So now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself. Period."

Judd says her relationships, including her marriage to race-car driver Dario Franchitti, have improved.

"It's so simple really: I was unhappy and now I'm happy," she says. "Now, even when I'm having a rough day, it's better than my best day before treatment."

Judd starred in 2002's "Frida" and 2004's "De-Lovely." Her upcoming films include "Bug," directed by William Friedkin and co-starring Harry Connick Jr.

Get more News »

• Email
• Print
• Report a typo
•